Anyway, he's English, and she thinks probably he's wicked. Most ranchmen
are. He lives all alone with only cow-punchers for companions, and he
needs a sweet womanly influence in his home. So Kid's decided to be a
lady, and go back and marry Guardie, and make him happy for the rest of
his life."

Patty laid herself on the bed and rolled in glee. Rosalie rose and
regarded her with a touch of asperity.

"I don't see anything so funny--I think it's very romantic."

"Kid exerting a sweet womanly influence!" Patty gurgled. "She can't even
pretend she's a lady for an hour. If you think she can _stay_ one--"

"Love," pronounced Rosalie, "has accomplished greater wonders than
that--you wait and see."

And the school did see. Kid McCoy's reformation became the sensation of
the year. The teachers attributed the felicitous change in her
deportment to the good influence of Rosalie, and though they were
extremely relieved, they did not expect it to last. But week followed
week, and it did last.

Kid McCoy no longer answered to "Kid." She requested her friends to call
her "Margarite." She dropped slang and learned to embroider; she sat
through European Travel and Art History nights with clasped hands and a
sweetly pensive air, where she used to drive her neighbors wild by a
solid hour of squirming. Voluntarily, she set herself to practising
scales. The reason she confided to Rosalie, and Rosalie to the rest of
the school.

They needed the softening influence of music on the ranch. One-eyed Joe
played the accordion, and that was all the music they had. The school
saw visions of the transformed Margarite, dressed in white, sitting
before the piano in the twilight singing softly the "Rosary," while
Guardie watched her with folded arms; and the cowboys, with bowie knives
sheathed in their boots, and lariats peacefully coiled over their
shoulders, gathered by the open window.

Lenten services that year, instead of being forcibly endured by a
rebellious Kid, were attended by a sweetly reverent Margarite. The
entire school felt an electric thrill at sight of Miss McCoy walking up
the aisle with downcast eyes, and hands demurely clasping her prayer
book. Usually she looked as much in place in the stained-glass
atmosphere of Trinity Chapel as an unbroken broncho colt.

This amazing reform continued for seven weeks. The school was almost
beginning to forget that there was ever a time when Kid McCoy was not a
lady.

Then one day a